


The Guilty

by AHeartForStories



Series: These Hands of Mine [2]
Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Amputation, Blood, Blood and Gore, Broken, Gen, Graphic, Guilt, Hiccup Whump, Race To The Edge, Self-Hatred, Whump, both of these boys need help, brothers by choice, brothers by heart, futuristic AU, may be considered, rtte, send help, toothless is broken too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 17:56:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15296910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHeartForStories/pseuds/AHeartForStories
Summary: Sequel to 'These Hands of Mine'. Ever since that last battle, Toothless has not been able to forgive himself for failing to protect his Rider.





	The Guilty

**Author's Note:**

> Surprisingly enough, I've had three people requesting me to expand on my one-shot 'These Hands of Mine', so I think I will be turning it into a short series. The updates won't be frequent and I can't say exactly how many short one-shots I'll be adding to it, but here is at least one part I have written.

To Toothless, the silence was unforgiving.  
There was nothing to distract him, no one to keep him company, there was not even a single annoying Terror to keep him on his toes. All alone here in the room he shared with his Rider, he, too, found the quiet to be more than a little discomforting.  
Curled up on the perfectly rectangular stone bed was the Night Fury who listened to the single sound keeping him grounded to reality.  
Stoick's snoring, loud enough to go through walls that weren't all that thin to begin with, filled the dragon's sensitive hearing and kept him from dozing off and getting the sleep that his body surely needed.  
Though the man usually agitated him during the night, Toothless didn't mind now. He very much preferred the sleepless nights over the ones filled with nightmares of how horribly he had wronged his Rider and how he had been doing so for years.  
The leg had been his fault too.  
When the Red Death had become an inferno of fire that had pushed even his fireproof hide to the test, he had grabbed hold of the then fifteen year old boy's closest limb with his teeth in his desperation to save him as he fell, which happened to be Hiccup's left leg.  
Is already thinner bones had snapped, flesh had been torn, the limb was irreparably damaged within the seconds it took for Toothless to pull the human teen close to him and wrap his wings protectively around him like a near impenetrable cocoon.  
Hiccup had known. Without ever needing to tell him, Hiccup had somehow always known. And he had forgiven him even faster than Toothless had after the loss of his left tailfin.  
He had smiled that crooked smile of his and jokingly stated how they matched each other perfectly now. Whatever worries that might have stayed with the Night Fury after Hiccup had woken up to find his first stump had left. Because somehow he knew then that his human had already forgiven him.  
But this was different.  
Though it had been difficult to get used to walking on his prosthetic, the loss of one leg could not compare to the loss of two arms, of the two hands with which Hiccup had crafted such wonderful things throughout the years he's known him.  
And to make matters worse, he hadn't been awake back then.  
So Toothless felt grateful to go through another night without sleep. He wouldn't be able to bear having another nightmare take him back to the place where it had all happened, the rigged storage unite that had supposedly held some of the Dragon Hunters' more dangerous weapons. Hel, sometimes both times Hiccup lost a limb merged together.  
Even while wide awake he could not stop thinking about it. His every waking moment was spend degrading and loathing himself for failing so. Reminding him that it was because of him that Hiccup screamed. That it was his fault Hiccup now had three seperate places in his body that would hurt terribly should the weather turn. That he was to blame for the very fact that Hiccup may never invent again.  
His hands, once so talented, calming, and steady, were no more.  
A whimper left the Night Fury as his heart ached. It was a suffocating kind of feeling that clenched painfully around his chest. Like he couldn't breath even if he tried.  
Lifting his head up, Toothless' gaze came to rest on the bed that had remained unslept in because its owner was in the hospital.  
Ignoring his tired body's complains, the dragon got up from the perfectly cut slab of stone to instead settle on the floor next to the bed. His head rested on the chilly mattress, serving as another reminder that it had not been used in quite a while already.  
The sheets were in a light blue colour, but Toothless could very easily imagine what they'd look like stained with blood.  
He'd imagined they'd look similar to Astrid's once blue shirt as she had shredded it and used it to tie around Hiccup's left bicep. After using the heated axe head of her weapon of choice to cauterize the wound before he had bled out completely. He had been thrashing and crying out the entire time.  
Toothless was haunted by every second.  
The call of his name and the look of alarm when Hiccup had realized in that single split second things were about to go terribly wrong.  
The impact of the first shockwave that send them both flying and that caused the massive concussion the young man now also suffered, the wave that had nearly blown out his eardrums.  
Toothless grabbing him and doing his best to shield him as sharp debris was flung everywhere. At the same time, fire and searing hot air spread all around them and ruined the leather saddle and the artificial tailfin.  
The numb feeling of not entirely being aware of his surroundings, the strange out-of-body experience that forced him to take a second or two after the explosion to comprehend just what had happened.  
And finally, the horrible realization that the blood-curdling wailing he heard came from the young man he had been trying to protect.  
He had only noticed the arm was gone when Astrid got him to move aside and released a cry of alarm of her own before going to work, Fishlegs helping by getting Stormfly to heat up her axe quickly.  
The right arm had still been there at that point.  
It was only later on when Hiccup woke up after a coma that lasted a good few days that Gothi gave them her final diagnosis, that there was no saving that severely burned right arm and that amputating it was all that could keep him from suffering a slow death soon.  
That was what Toothless had been told by Astrid when she came by him because there was no room for a dragon of his size.  
He even failed at being by Hiccup's side as he came to discover the absence of his dominant arm and received the news he would be losing the other one too.  
What good was being a Night Fury if you could not even keep your own brother by heart safe?  
Toothless decided he'd stay by the side of that empty bed and let the silent void be filled by inner voices screaming their judgement upon him. It was the least he deserved.


End file.
